[This book review was published in the Fall 2016 issue
of The Journal of Social, Political and
Economic Studies, pp. 106-112.]

Book Review

The Field of
Fight: How to Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies

Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn and Michael Ledeen

St. Martin’s
Press, 2016

As director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
was the United States’ top military intelligence officer until he was fired in
2014 for not putting the desired gloss on his testimony before a Congressional
committee.Offense was taken when he
opined that “we were not as safe as we had been a few years back.”Flynn is now more appreciated by presidential
candidate Donald Trump, for whom he is said to be the chief military adviser.Indeed, he was prominently mentioned as a
possible vice presidential candidate.We
can surmise that in addition to assigning value to Flynn’s experience in
intelligence, Trump – himself quite a renegade – has seen in Flynn characteristics
he finds appealing: independence and a desire to “tell it like it is,” a
rejection of “political correctness” as an ideological straitjacket, and a
skeptical attitude toward the elites that constitute the de facto government of the United States.In these things, Flynn and Trump are cut from
the same cloth.

Readers
are in for a surprise, however.What
most cries out about this book is how much it reveals a sharp difference between how the two
men would have the United States act toward other countries.Although their views may converge over time, Flynn
and Trump voice two very different strategies.A great deal rides on which one is chosen.

In The Field of
Fight, Flynn accepts the worldwide democratizing mission that has so long
been central to the thinking of each side of the political spectrum in the
United States.(This has been basic to
both the Right’s “neo-conservatism” and the Left’s “foreign policy
neo-liberalism.”) He writes that he “fervently
believes” that “advancing freedom… is in our American national interest,” and
goes on to say that “part of our national mission is to support democratic
revolutionaries against their oppressors.”In common with the neos of both schools, he advocates sponsoring “regime
change” in several countries.The
preferred method has been through “color” or “velvet” revolutions that bring
down regimes through “popular uprisings” such as the “Orange Revolution” in
Ukraine that overthrew the elected government there.As one example, Flynn favors American “ideological
and information warfare” to “bring down the Iranian regime.”Other targets would presumably include “the
tyrannical regime of… Assad” (in Syria), and the government of Vladimir Putin in
Russia.He points to Russia’s “many
aggressive actions” and refers several times to its membership in “the enemy
alliance” that “hates the West.” (1)

This contrasts sharply with Trump’s views.Trump runs counter to the United States’ long-standing
consensus when he holds that America should refrain from seeking to democratize
the world or to cleanse it from its countless injustices. (2)He is at odds with it, too, when he argues
that “regime change” has produced not democracy, but chaos, in the Middle East.
(3)Trump would oppose Radical Islam with an energetic but
nevertheless much more constrained strategy. (4)This would leave the other peoples of the
world to run their own affairs, undertaking no crusade that would militate for an
about-face in their religions or cultures. (This does not preclude “speaking out” against
such a thing as “the horrible practice of honor killings, where women are
murdered by their relatives for dressing, marrying or acting in a way that
violates fundamentalist teachings.”From
this, we can conclude that “letting other people run their own affairs” does
not go so far as to command American silence.)

Far from seeing
Russia as an inveterate enemy, he welcomes a friendly relationship with it. (5)
The United States, he says, should vigorously punish and prevent attacks upon
itself and its allies, but this is not the same thing as straining to rid the
world of its monsters. (6)In addition,
it is important to Trump that the United States strengthen itself and preserve
its borders and national identity (just
as he supposes Europe and all other non-Islamic peoples should).

It is worth pausing to think about the fateful
direction world affairs may be taking.Much of the twentieth century was occupied by massive, existential
struggles.If now the United States
continues to throw down a gauntlet toward much of the rest of the world,
another such struggle will grow and become increasingly virulent.In part, this can’t be escaped, since widespread
jihadi terrorism will pose a major, long-term problem even if the United States
takes Trump’s more non-interventionist course.The question is whether the struggle can be contained by essentially
letting the other peoples be themselves, for good or for bad, except for such
conflict as is made necessary to meet the jihadis’ own aggressions.

The differences in world strategy highlighted by this
book are major, not minor.A number of thoughtful
commentators have held, rightly in this reviewer’s opinion, that a global
effort to remake an enormously complex world is presumptuous, dangerous, impossibly
quixotic, and unspeakably expensive.Domestically, the effects of World War I, World War II, and the
decades-long Cold War (including the hot wars in Korea and Vietnam)would have dismayed the American Founding
Fathers, whose vision of a Republic of limited government has long since gone
up in smoke.If now we add another decades-long
existential conflict to those, the process will continue, exacerbated by the
fact that the necessary internal surveillance will inescapably jeopardize
everyone’s privacy and personal freedom.Jihadism, launching a series of attacks and in all likelihood building
an internal fifth column, will inevitably go far toward making that internal
surveillance imperative even if Trump’s more constrained strategy is
pursued.The intimate surveillance will
likely become a permanent feature of American society, though, if the United
States continues on its path as an interventionist overseer of the world.One would be hard pressed to find any
advocate of “liberty,” going back over the centuries, who would not have
cringed at the prospect.

We have thought it best to start this review by pointing
to the differences between Flynn and Trump about long-term strategies.In many ways, however, confronting Radical
Islamic attacks will require the same operational features under either
strategy. Although the book is not
specific on many aspects, there is nevertheless a lot in The Field of Fight that speaks to what must be done quite separately
from remaking the world.Among them:
“Destroying the jihadi armies… Discrediting their ideology… Creating a new set
of global alliances… (and) Challenging the regimes that support our
enemies.”He calls for denying the
jihadis safe havens, and writes that the United States must give countries that
would house them a “brutal choice: either eliminate the Radical Islamists or you
risk direct attack yourselves.”Flynn
would have the United States assist those that cannot do that themselves.

Flynn’s background is in intelligence, so it isn’t
surprising that he believes that operationalizing intelligence is “a critical
component of how to destroy Radical Islam today.”We can readily understand why this is so in a
conflict that is even more asymmetrical (often against lone-wolf individuals
and sleeper cells) than it is a fight against conventional massed forces.Flynn is highly critical of those in the
intelligence community who bend their reports to tell policy makers what they
want to hear, stressing that a total commitment to truth is essential. (7)The intelligence operations in Iraq were
excellent, he says, as are Israel’s.

There has been much controversy in the United States
over what sort of interrogation is permissible, and Flynn doesn’t reveal his
thoughts about that.We know, though,
that Trump has said he will approve “waterboarding” and has hinted that more
extreme measures may be used, pointing to how those measures, whatever they
would be, would fall far short of the Islamic State’s beheadings and
burnings-alive. (8)

There is much that The
Field of Fight, a short book of just 193 pages, doesn’t discuss.Trump has said that as president he will
destroy ISIS immediately, but when asked how he would do this consistently with
his position that he will not use ground troops, he has answered that it is
foolish to reveal military plans in advance.Flynn casts no further light on this, as we might expect he
wouldn’t.Larger questions have to do
with what sort of end-game the United States is to pursue in Iraq and
Afghanistan.Do the demographics and
sectarian differences allow Humpty-Dumpty to be put together in either country?Trump opposed invading Iraq in the first
place, but has criticized the much later withdrawal that left a vacuum that was
filled by ISIS.How can the United
States get out of Iraq and Afghanistan without leaving precisely such a
vacuum?Flynn writes as though “we could
prevail” in those countries, but never says what “prevailing” would look like.If he has nation-building as the objective, he has a difficult argument
to make that it is even possible.This
reviewer had hoped the book would provide a clear-sighted analysis, which it
doesn’t.This is not to say that anyone
can expect simple answers.

A major subject that runs through the book has to do
with the nature of Islam.Is Radical
Islam something distinct from Islam in general?Flynn’s background at the top of military intelligence makes him an
ideal person to address this question.From the totality of what he says, it would seem that jihadist militancy
predominates within the Islamic swath, running from northwest Africa to the
Philippines, but with a significant number of Islamic leaders who want
co-existence with the non-Islamic world and with the mass of the population not
definitely committed to one side or the other until it becomes clear which side
is winning.

Why are we to think jihadist militancy
predominates?Flynn observes that
“Muslims want to apply Sharia law” and that “they want to impose a worldwide
system based on their version of Sharia law.”He quotes from Laurent Murawiec’s The
Mind of Jihad, where Murawiec writes about “the veneration of savagery, the
cult of killing, the worship of death” and says “the highest religious
authorities sanction or condone it, government authorities approve and organize
it, intellectuals and the media praise them.From one end of the Muslim world to the other.” (9) Pointing to Islam’s historic fall from
intellectual and cultural heights by a centuries-long “decline in Islamic
culture,” Flynn asks “What went wrong?” and answers by saying “they banned the
search for truth, proclaiming that it had been fully and finally revealed in
the Koran.”He says it will require for
Islam the equivalent of what the West went through with the Reformation: “a
complete reformation of the Islamic religion.”He sees realistically that if this is to occur it “must start inside the
Muslim community.”If this is so, it
would be well for him to realize that no amount of “regime change,” “nation
building” and proselytizing for democracy, imposed from outside Islam itself,
will suffice.

Moderate Muslims do exist, Flynn says.“There were numerous Iraqi imams who rejected
the revolutionary doctrines of the insurgents.Chief among them was the most important Shi’ite religious figure, Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.”Further:
“There are plenty of Islamic religious leaders who, like Sistani, detest the
radical jihadis.”He mentions “a global
Muslim Reform Movement.”We find there
is a significant opening within Islam’s doctrinal history when Flynn tells us that
“traditional Shi’ite doctrine” held that “civil society must not be governed by
clerics until the return of the ‘Vanished Imam,’ whose reappearance would usher
in the millennium.”Governments in some
Islamic countries have pressed for moderation: In Singapore, “the government’s
goal is to get the Muslim community on record that it’s quite all right for
pious Muslims to live in a secular state….”He says Indonesia is following a similar course, and that “half a dozen
countries have banned headscarves.”In
the United States, “there are many American Muslims who have spoken out against
the advance of Radical Islam,” but they “are predictably singled out by the
Islamic radicals.”

There is much that Flynn does not address about all
this.Readers are given no information
about the relative weight of these forces.Are the “moderates,” say, a major segment within countries like Pakistan
and Bangladesh, or are they just a “cry in the wilderness” in a milieu awash in
Sharia and brutal militancy?Is there a
form of Sharia that is compatible with non-Islamic values?And other than what we have just quoted about
American Muslims, readers come away with no real feel for what the situation is
within the growing American Muslim population.What, for example, is the tone within the mosques that are popping up
throughout the United States?To most
Americans, the mosques are as impervious as black holes are to
astronomers.The same questions must be
asked about the years-long Muslim influx into Europe.They are vitally important questions for the
future of Western civilization.So we
see that The Field of Fight is far
from a complete analysis of Islam and of what must be done to combat its
encroachments.

What about the Muslim “masses”?Flynn quotes an observation about “hundreds
of millions of Muslims, the ocean in which jihadists comfortably swim.”But he leaves the door open about their
current alignment, and to the possibility of their casting their lot with the
moderates, when he writes that “if the
Muslim masses can’t get any support from the United States, they will eventually throw in with the jihadis”
[our emphasis].This is a generalized
application of his view that in Iraq and Afghanistan most people just want to
live their lives in a way least touched by the conflict, and will “choose their
side once they decide who the winners-to-be are.”The decision, he says, is made locally “by
tribes, clans, and networks.”In
conducting wars where the indigenous population is the ultimately deciding
factor, it is essential to “immerse ourselves in the society.”Although this may be essential in more
localized contexts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it is questionable how much it
can be applied to the vast reaches of the Islamic swath.And it is fair to ask how ready large numbers
of people will be to give up such culturally and religiously engrained
practices as, say, fatwas and honor
killings.It can’t be imagined that there
will be anything other than great reluctance to swing to a more secular,
virtually Westernized, form of Islam.

Michael Ledeen is a co-author with Gen. Flynn, and is
himself the author (or in one case co-author) of four other books on Iran and
Radical Islam.The Field of Fight is, however, written in the first person, with
Flynn as the speaker.The book’s title
is said to come from Homer, but no quote from Homer is given.A Google search tells us it comes from Book
XX of The Iliad, where the line
appears “Cease then: our bus’ness in the Field of Fight is not to question, but
to prove our might.”

Dwight D. Murphey

Endnotes

1.Flynn may
think that it is self-evident that Russia remains an enemy of the United States
just as the Soviet Union was, but readers who don’t assume this as a given would
find some elaboration by him helpful.He
doesn’t give it.

2.In his
foreign policy speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on August 15, 2016, Trump said that “President
Obama and Hillary Clinton should never have attempted to build Democracy in
Libya, to push for immediate regime change in Syria or to support the overthrow
of Mubarak in Egypt.”

3.Also in the
Youngstown address: “Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change
is a proven failure.We have created
vacuums that allow terrorists to grow and thrive.”

4.“Our new approach…
must be to halt the spread of Radical Islam.”

5.“I believe
that we could find common ground with Russia in the fight against ISIS.They too have much at stake in the outcome in
Syria, and have had their own battles with Islamic terrorism.”

6.The
statement by President John Quincy Adams in 1826 that America should be an
example to the world but should not go abroad in search of “monsters to destroy”
has recently been recounted many times.Adams’ principle was the mainstream of American policy until 1898.Trump would recur to that tradition.

7.It isn’t
just a matter of intelligence professionals bending the truth.Flynn sees it as a broader, long-term
political problem.“Our political
leaders insist that the war is going well, and the scores of professional
analysts who know better are being censored… The censorship isn’t new; it has
been going on for years.”

8.It will
surprise many Americans to know that the American army made frequent use of
waterboarding in its war in the Philippines at the beginning of the twentieth
century.See Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War
in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (New
York: New American Library, 2012), p. 2.Waterboarding was then called “the water cure,” was used by both the
Americans and the Filipinos, and had its origins in the Spanish Inquisition.

9.Lest this
reviewer thinks any of this is an overstatement, he reminds himself that one of
his friends, a brilliant student from Bangladesh, has long been under a fatwa
sentencing him to death for having converted from Islam to Episcopalianism,
and of how two very likeable young business professors from Iran calmly told
him over lunch that it was all right to kill a Baha’i on the street.